“My mother always said, ‘I buy my daughters Calvin Klein clothes so that’s what they get used to. Then when they graduate college, they have to figure out how to buy them themselves.’”

That was the message — being financially savvy and independent — for more than 75 teenage girls and their mothers or grandmothers, who packed an auditorium at the JCC in Manhattan this week. It was the launch of Life$avings, a program designed to teach financial literacy to young women. The group already runs programs for college students, but this is its first time targeting the high school demographic.